This invention relates generally to machines for forming cut crop into bales and, more particularly, into cylindrical bales, and is an improvement over prior art balers of the type which employ belts to rotate and compact a bale on a moving machine such as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,914,926 issued Oct. 28, 1975 and assigned to an assignee common with the present application.
In such baling machines hay is received by the baler between a feed or packer roller and a conveyor belt and pressed into a flat, thin mass from which it passes to a core forming area where it is rolled between the conveyor belt and the flight of an oppositely moving belt arrangement. Thereafter, the thin mass of hay is rolled about the core into a bale which continues to increase in size until the desired size is achieved. During its formation, the bale is formed in a zone in which the bale is confined between the belts and the feeder roller.
The said prior art U.S. Pat. No. 3,914,926 utilizes large and expensive springs for maintaining tension in the compacting belt, which springs were not only expensive but required a large amount of space on the machine in order to accommodate their required size. These prior art devices furthermore would not provide for suitable adjustability of the bale tensioning mechanisms, nor provide varying tension to the compacting belt, either for various crop conditions or desired bale density, or for varying the pressure applied to the bale during different stages of bale formation.